The human heart is an extremely complex organ and has many operational parameters that can be useful to study in order to gain an appreciation for the heart's operation. Certain parameters can be used to not only assess the health and operation of the heart, but can be a powerful predictive tool for predicting certain aspects pertaining to the owner of the heart. Not surprisingly, ongoing medical and clinical research seems to find new and different correlations between heart parameters and information that is of interest to physicians. As these parameters and correlations are discovered, it would be highly desirable to make use of them in an integrated and convenient fashion.
As an example, consider the following. Many times the parameters and correlations mentioned above are such that they can only conveniently be studied and observed in a clinical setting, i.e. in the doctor's office. To observe the parameters and gather the information that is to be used to generate the desired correlations, the patient may be required to be connected to expensive medical testing devices. One image that comes to mind is the image of a heart patient, wired to a heart monitor, running or walking briskly on a treadmill in the doctor's office so that the doctor can gather information about how their heart performs under exercise conditions. While the information is useful to the doctor, it might be useful, in some instances, to gather the data in locations other than the doctor's office so that the desired correlations can be later (or contemporaneously) computed.
Accordingly, this invention arose out of concerns associated with providing methods and systems that enable heart parameters, useful in computing desired correlations, to be conveniently and flexibly collected and saved.